


Crash Upon The Wake

by loudsighing



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amelia and Doppler Acting as Jim's Parents, BAMF Jim Hawkins, Cybernetics, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, John Silver Has a Heart, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, They're not very good at it but they're trying their hardest, Touch Starved Characters, Unnamed background characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29937699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudsighing/pseuds/loudsighing
Summary: Jim is eight years old when his parents decide to embark on a voyage across the galaxy in order to keep their business afloat. Jim convinces them to take him along, thinking this is the best chance he has to spend time with them after being ignored for so long. When an old friend comes to collect an owed debt, however, Jim will find himself losing a lot more than just a few months time with his mother and father. Will Jim be able uncover the truth about his fateless encounter with pirates, or will the toll of loss overwhelm the boy before he has a chance to discover the gift he's been given?
Relationships: Amelia/Delbert Doppler, Jim Hawkins & John Silver
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Crash Upon The Wake

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a really long time since I wrote publicly, so any feedback or comments are well appreciated. Mildly based off of some ideas submitted to and discussed on https://authorchanlove.tumblr.com. Go check her out if you haven't already.
> 
> The premise to this fic is really dark but I promise it will not be 100% angst. And, hey look, more than just 7 minutes of screen time building up Doppler and Amelia's relationship. Whould've thought it was possible. Just a warning, this fic will have some pretty graphic flashbacks, descriptions of abuse, gore, and murder. If you are sensitive to any of these topics you may want to avoid reading this work. Tags will be updated as the story goes along since I'm not sure if I want to do a 100% overhaul of the movie yet.

The day’s warmth did not cling to the darkened wood walls of the inn after the sun had fallen beyond the distant mining plants. The young boy laid awake late that night, shivering in his cot, pulling the threadbare sheets as tight as his boney hands could manage. The odd creak and groan of the inn settling kept the young boy tossing and turning despite his attempts to hunker down for the night. It was so far into the evening that it was nearly morning, far past times that Jim had ever tried to stay up reading for fear of being caught, but it was far too cold to fall asleep naturally. Autumn had given way to the first cold snap suddenly this year, and tinted the windows blue with frost, spilling navy and violet shadows across Jim’s densely decorated bedroom. Jim knew his parents had forgotten about turning the heat on so early in the season, since it was quite warm in the afternoons while the kitchen was running, and they had yet to climb up the staircase to their shared room down the hall. 

Even now, teeth clicking in his skull, the boy could hear the familiar tilt of raised voices in the dining room below. Jim sniffed as the noise swelled, shuddering once more, then wiggled out of the thin blankets. He couldn’t even wince as his feet hit the undoubtedly cold planks below -- they were already too numb to feel a thing. The boy bundled himself up with the meager scrap of fabric acting as his blanket before creeping over to the door. Thin, dulled fingers seek out the handle, easing it down and swinging it in slow towards the room. He had to be careful to open it softly otherwise the hinges would squeak. Jim knew he wasn’t supposed to be out of bed this late, but he wanted to ask if they had another blanket lying around for him to sleep with. Leaving the door open in case he needed to dart back to his room, Jim clutched the blanket tight against the chill and waddled slowly down the hall towards the main staircase, his parents’ words becoming clearer as he met the thick wooden banister. His father’s voice reached him first. 

“--just think about it!” Jim reflexively flinched before remembering that they didn’t know he was here, and settled a hand on the sticky railing to ground himself. The sensation was nothing short of disgusting, but it gave him something else to focus on rather than the apprehension mounting in his gut. His mother’s voice rose up nest, meekly at first but growing with apprehension as she continued to speak. He could see them below; only one lantern was still lit at the table nearest to the kitchen doors. Chairs were still at odd angles around the sparse diner, which seemed so much more empty and dull without guests flooding in. The pale lantern light flickered and waved across his parents’ faces. Their expressions seemed dim and pinched with worry, and Jim immediately felt worse for getting up out of bed. He knew shouldn’t bother them—but it was _so_ cold, there had to be something he could get to sleep with. 

“Leland, please--I need you _here_ , at the inn. Business--business is about to start up for the season, I-I can’t manage without help! Jim’s far too young to work and the last part-timer--” Jim gnaws his lower lip at the mention of the previous assistance his Mom had before fall hit. She had been a tidy, soft spoken girl that always stopped to greet him, even when the diner was bustling with people. She’d slide his breakfast over the tucked away table meant for him each morning with a small smile, like it was their little secret, and sometimes would even sit with him while he finished homework in the evenings, looking over his answers. He never needed help, but Jim enjoyed the company of another person sitting nearby, the polite grins they would exchange. She looked like Mom, just a little bit, when she smiled at him with her pearly white teeth and her sun-kissed, dimpled cheeks. She was blonde though, and her hair was cut so short that she couldn’t pull any of it up into a ponytail while working, most of it hiding out under her cream colored bonnet. She would braid his rat tail if it ever came undone though, and Jim found himself selfishly missing her. 

That had been up until she had ducked upstairs, Jim assumed to use the bathroom, and hadn’t returned one lunch rush, leaving Sarah to fend for herself that day. Jim had heard some of the commotion downstairs and had run down to help the best he could, following his mother’s clipped instructions to a tee, bringing food and drink to the correct tables, barely helping her scrape by. When she closed early that day and stormed upstairs to find her helper, the study door had been left open, drawers ripped out and their contents scattered across the cramped floor. Papers and pens and collected trinkets lay in a state of cracked chaos around the main desk, and the windows were flung open wide, a steady breeze disrupting the already disorderly mess along every surface. The savings from the past few months were gone, torn out from their place in hiding in the main desk. His father’s raised voice brings him back to the present with a start. 

“ _I know!_ I know that, _alright?!_ This damn inn isn’t going to make up the difference in a three months time. If we don’t get that money to Jockey we’re good as fucking dead, Sarah!” Pushing back from the table, the chair grated on already-worn wood, toppling over with the force at which Leland shot up to pace. His motions became increasingly erratic as he began circling and gesturing, the stress and exhaustion of the situation evidently becoming too much for him. Jim gripped the banister tight to keep from running away before he could muster the courage to speak or walk down the stairs. His fingers and toes were turning a bruised red as feeling began to come back to them, then heat of the diner slowly seeping into him from his place near the rail. 

“Leland, don’t--” 

“No, _listen_ to me, you don’t know them like I know them! Those scum are _pirates_ , they don’t give a rat’s ass if we have a good reason, they’ll hang us by our _intestines_ if we can’t pay up!” Jim gasped noiselessly, bringing the hand clutching the sheet up to his mouth to muffle any sound he could’ve made. The apprehension he’d been feeling surged up like a wave, heart crashing against his rib cage as it pounds away at the mention of pirates. Excitement rose first as Captain Flint flew to his mind immediately, but then he remembered that his favorite book was about a dead pirate—Dad was talking about _alive_ pirates who took over ships and stole and tossed people overboard if they disagreed with them. And, evidently, gutted people for not being able to make enough money. Terror struck him at his father’s urgency, and Jim’s hand left the rail and clutched his stomach tight, body going still as if to hide himself from unseen pirates in this very room. 

“ _Leland!_ Keep your voice _down!_ ” His mother admonished, and a hush briefly fell across the diner floor, Leland breathing heavy and hard, Sarah straining to hear past him for any shifts in the rooms above, listening for any signs that their child had woken. Jim’s fingers curled closer still to his skin, tense with the anticipation of being found. His father was too preoccupied with worry to remember their son sleeping upstairs and pressed on. 

“It’s our only chance Sarah, we don’t have a choice! Even if you break your record earnings this winter, we’ll still owe more than half over, with that damn floozy stealing from your till. Don’t you care about your son? God knows what’ll happen to him if we can’t get the money in time.” A flash of anger and hurt seemed to shock Sarah, her pleading eyes dropping from Leland as she recoiled and buried her face in her hands. Feeling unsettled and guilty by the show of emotion, Jim turned so he was no longer looking at the couple below, instead staring down the darkened steps down towards the door. The one light post outside provided a pale orange glow against the otherwise silent blae night. Jim shuts his eyes tight against the glow, his parent’s voices fading away as he forces himself to imagine the warmth of the sun that will come in a few more hours, the smell of fresh baked morning pastries, the flutter in his stomach at his mother's wide smiles. It would be okay. Everything would be fine--they were just arguing right now, they were angry and blowing up at each other, in the morning it would be okay. 

Jim takes in a steady breath after what feels like years, the pulse in his ears slowly dying down to the continued sound of bickering below now soothing, rather than grating. Tired eyes drift open, staring at the floorboards once more, before rising to look to his parents again. He should really ask for another blanket before he passes out standing up, falling down the stairs would be a really bad way to start the day. He walks down the next few stops and pauses to call out to his mother just before the landing. But his eyes catch on the door as the light from the city street lamp outside seems to grow brighter. Two curled, almost lopsided yellow blotches linger in the door’s circular window, bisected by the wood panelling, as they trace the room. The noise completely drops away to silence as Jim’s breath seems to freeze in his lungs, the fear returning ten fold. _Pirates!_ He thinks, mind already abuzz with horrible, gut wrenching scenarios of the door bursting forward and rotten-toothed men barrelling in, though the inn remains relatively quiet and undisturbed. 

He wants to scream, but all that comes out is a choked, straining little wheeze, barely enough to even be heard over the soft wind audible beyond the walls of the inn. Jim can distinctly make out cross-shaped centers of the lights, and suddenly Jim cemented in place at the sight of something’s eyes fixing it’s gaze on his parents, calculating, then sweeping up to the side and landing on Jim, narrowing with something like curiosity. 

Faintly, Sarah rises from the table behind him with a sigh, and the intent to finish tidying up the main sitting room before she heads to bed, Leland still pressing the issue at hand but gradually losing steam. They opened later on Sundays for the brunch service, so there were at least a few hours of rest left to be had. Her gaze sweeps over the room, and lands on a stock-still Jim, pale as snow and unmoving, startling her with a jolt. He is obviously transfixed with the front door, and it's not until the gaze from the other side of the window abruptly slides away to the cliffside of the inn that he can even look away. She calls his name, but Jim doesn’t notice her rushing up beside him for another few moments, head turning but eyes still lingering on the door for a moment longer before he takes a gasp in and looks up at her. 

“Jim? James _Pleiades_ Hawkins!” 

His mother looks angry, though the furrow in her brow turns to worry as Jim fails to answer her for the second time, and she slows her movements as she goes to put a hand on either of the boy’s clenched arms. 

“What are you doing up this late, young man? It is far, far past your bedtime young man...Jim?” Her fingers curl gently in his blanket, feeling the chill stuck to the boy, and the crease on her forehead deepens. Jim tries to focus on her, really, genuinely tries, but his eyes keep flitting back to the window, panic racing in his chest, heart near bursting out his ears. It’s only when a chair is knocked back upright and shoved into place that Jim’s conscious thoughts start running again, and he snaps to attention. His voice is wavering in his own ears as he tugs the thin blanket close to himself, wanting to hide from the perceived danger outside and his mother’s disappointed gaze. 

“Sorry--I’m sorry! I know I’m ‘posed to be in bed I just got cold so I got up to get another blanket but I thought I saw someone outside my window and I got scared--” The boy’s reed thin chest is heaving with every errant, heavy breath as he desperately tries to avoid his father’s approaching ire, heavy footsteps thud-thud-thud-ing ever closer as Jim struggles to get the words out. Sarah takes pity on the poor boy, dragging him in for a close hug, easing the struggling lungs rattling the poor boy’s body with shakes and shivers. 

She must feel the cold on him, since she shushes him and sighs, cradling the boy’s face to her stomach with an arm around his back. Burning fingers cling to her stained apron as he holds her back, the honeyed scent of his mother’s warm embrace pushing the terror and fear right out of him. A gentle hand cards through his sweat-sticking hair and eases over the shaved sides with practiced care for the first time in weeks, and Jim gasps once more, before melting, sinking into her as he pushes up from the floorboards onto his tip-toes, the uneasy cadence of his breath smoothing out as a warm fuzz floods him from head to toe. 

Those gentle fingers repeat their path once, twice, three times more, before coming to a stop at the apex of the part in his hair, her body pulling away to tilt his chin up and look at him square in the face as his father stops at her side. Three sets of tired eyes glance between each other with varying levels of intent and wary before Leland breaks the silence with a shallow huff of his own. Jim’s father kneels before him on the step, and James looks into the older man’s eyes for the first time in what must be nearly a year. The rugged face peering back at him, eyes dark and serious, is almost foriegn to the boy completely. Jim gulps quietly at the severity of the conversation his parents’ now assume he’s overheard, and what that means for him. 

“A lesser man would flog you for eavesdropping like that, James, you know better than that. Grown-up conversations aren’t for kids--I don’t care if you just wanted to come down for another blanket, you should’ve told us you were there. Do you understand what that means?” Guilt sank heavy in Jim’s gut as he nodded, knowing to agree with his father no matter what, his chance to defend himself shredded before he could even open his mouth. Sarah was quick to interject though, always the voice of reason, much to the young boy’s relief. 

“But not tonight. We need to get you another blanket, and back to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day and I’ll need your help around the kitchen Jim, you’ll need all the sleep you can get. Can you do that for me?” Jim nodded again, willing enthusiasm he didn’t hold onto his face, and smiled softly when it passed Sarah’s evaluation. She began steering him back upstairs with a hand on his shoulder, two sets of footsteps climbing up after him. It wasn’t until an oversized winter blanket was dumped over his shoulders in the hallway that Jim realized they had even listened to what he had said, and the lingering tension melted away under the weight of the additional blanket. The heat wasn’t ticked on, but he wouldn’t need it with the extra covers. Sarah didn’t make the boy let go of the blankets to tuck him in, rather let him settle on the bed before tucking the excess fabric of the duvet in around his feet and arms to keep him still. Her hand returned once to his hair, meaning to sweep it out of his face, when Jim sleepily spoke up. 

“Are you and Dad going to leave?” The fingers along his scalp abruptly fisted the strands of hair in their grasp. It was such a jerky, half-formed motion that Jim knew it was simply a reflex brought on by his poor choice in question, not an active act of aggression, and stayed limp. His mother’s breath hitched, then wavered as she detangled her fingers, laying his head to rest again and putting distance between them. He felt bad for asking immediately, curling in on himself to hide his shamed expression. A soft sigh coasted over his right ear as she pulled away, the rustle of petticoats followed by her weight leaving the bed as she took a step towards the door.

“Maybe for only a few months this year, your father and I haven’t decided yet.” By her tone alone, Jim knew she was already resigned to leaving, and was only saying that for his benefit. He nodded regardless—a soft shift in the sheets—to show that he understood her. The pause between those words and the next is so great that Jim would’ve startled if he had the energy to do so when she speaks next. It is barely a whisper in the air as his mother pulls the door to his room closed tight, leaving him wondering if he even heard her at all as he finally succumbs to the alluring call of sleep.

_“You might be better off here without us.”_


End file.
